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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Trout Lake Report: Does One Brown Drake a Hatch Make?

You get to the lake for an evening outing. You want to go down the Drake Bank, but the channel access has campers in it. You launch at the far north end instead.

You have another muddler variation tied up for the occasion.

Off you go.

You cover some water before a little Rainbow can't resist.

You work up to the inlet.

You find two more Rainbows ready to dance.

You work around the corner, then tie on a woolly bugger for the troll back.

There's another little Rainbow down there.

You get back to the inlet and tie the muddler back on. You wonder if you can break the string of Rainbows.

You flip the muddler up toward the flow and a brown head rises up and takes it down. There we go.

You look for more but don't find any.

You aren't on the Drake Bank, but the next best thing is across the lake. You kick across to the east shoreline, the other bank that has yielded fine Drake hatches. You just want to take a look.

Twenty yards off the shoreline you see it: your first Drake of the season, big and beautiful.

You look for a hatch, on the water and in the air. You don't see any more bugs. You feel that even one Drake, though, warrants fishing a Drake. You look through all your fly boxes: no Drakes. The box with the Drakes in it is in the truck.

O ye of little faith, you will be unprepared when the day is upon you, and will verily be reduced to fishing a yellow Humpy.

It works! You cast the Humpy into the shoreline, and it elicits what you can only call a Drake take: a loud, splashy, smack of a take. Has this Rainbow already been snacking on the big bugs?

You work on down the shoreline with the Humpy.

Just when you begin to think it was a fluke, another Rainbow flips out of the water and belly flops on the fly. Has to be a Drake take.

It's early. This is a June event. But you conclude that the hatch is on. Too bad you'll be traveling again, and won't get back on the water for a whole week.

Go ahead and get started without me, you think, and get those fish really worked up, just in time for my return.